Together We Can Build?

This was the ANC's local elections campaign song by kwaito artist, Chomee (video complete with guest appearance from the King of Kwaito, Arthur Mofokate). It's an ironic considering that the ANC failing in public service delivery from decent housing to toilets to electricity and water services.  Here's an extract from a very powerful piece Bastards of a Dream Deferred by Lindokuhle Nkosi (recommended reading). Although it was published a few days before the election - it's still relevant and it provides a sobering contrast to the happy clappy, shuckin' n jivin' video above. 
(sidenote: Compare and contrast Beyonce's dance routine for 'Who runs the world' with this, clearly Bey's moves come from South Africa.)

“We have no water, we have no electricity. The ANC is killing us man. They killed my father. They took my legs.” I want to tell him that alcohol took his father. I want to tell him he lost his legs when the Military truck that he and his drunk soldier friends were in hit a pothole and flipped. Instead, I focus my energies on funneling the boiling water into three small teacups, whilst watching that he doesn’t steal anything to trade for alcohol, like he did last time. I’m cold and hungry. I’m thinking about the slow puncture I got trying to avoid a mound of cement the community had placed in the road when they realised the government would never get around to building speed humps outside the school. The pot slips, water spills on the coals putting out the fire that had been burning for three days now. No worries, the gas stove has arrived, and I managed not to burn myself.

I place the tray on the table next to a few lit candles. The same table my frightened cousins and I huddled under a long time ago, hiding from the police and red-clad Inkatha impis who marched down the street armed with pangas and hatred. “It would get better,” the older ones would say. The country would be free, my uncle would come back from exile. One day, we’d share in the freedoms that were currently only a privilege of the paler skinned South Africans. But there’s no electricity, and the water has been on and off since December, and I still need to change my tire. They say the sub-station burnt. The broken dreams made love to the empty promises and ignited a baptism of fire. The decaying bodies of the poor and the black blocked the pipes and the water can not flow. The desolate tears choke the voice of the oppressed and their cries will not be heard.

Jacob Zuma’s face smiles audaciously off a streetlamp that has never, in my memory, been operational. “Vote ANC!” He grins. “Together we can do more…” A tall vandal has scribbled something in black marker over the ellipses. The campaign poster now reads: “Together, we can do more crime.

And in the Red Corner... And in the Blue Corner...

This past Saturday I witnessed a spat on Twitter between President Paul Kagame and British journalist Ian Birrell. Kagame was featured in the Financial Times series Lunch With ... (insert name of African politician) in which he claimed that because the UN and the international community (i.e the West) had failed to act on the 1994 Rwanda genocide they had no 'moral right' to criticize him. Birrell tweeted that Kagame was 'despotic and deluded' with a link to the FT piece. Kagame, riled by Birrell's tweet and he immediately responded and you can read the whole exchange, thanks to View from the Cave. What's probably most interesting about this conversation is that it's probably the first time a President and journalist have had such a lively exchange on Twitter - praise be to Twitter for providing a platform for spontaneous engagement which would previously have been at a press conference, a chance meeting or something of that sort... Unlike other world leaders (or former) who talk to no one and probably have their PR staff tweeting news links and press releases like Barack Obama (@barackobama), Nick Clegg (@nickclegg), Jacob Zuma (@sapresident) and Ban Ki Moon (@secgen), Kagame, like Hugo Chavez (@chavezcandanga) actually does it himself and interacts with people.

What was different about this particular exchange is that its one of the few times Kagame's engaged with a critic and it comes on the back of a painfully boring but rosy You Tube World Leaders interview in which as 'Africa is a Country' rightly put it 'Kagame spins You Tube'. It was a PR exercise -soft questions with no further probing from an interviewer who although smart, funny and likable on other occasions, was not the best choice for this gig. Kagame's had this social media friendly Prez rep for a while now (also see this) but after seeing Saturday's exchange the cracks are beginning to show because Kagame's not entirely the affable, savvy guy he's appears to be online. Sure he has his pluses but not where the Congo or political opposition are concerned.

Kagame didn't actually answer any of the questions posed by Birrell about his government's silencing of political and media opposition. Instead it was a slinging match in which the foreign minister, Louise Mushikwabo also got involved. In a rather strange move, she protected her tweets the very next day as if it was an act of self-protection from a threat, but its an act of hiding. Doesn't she know protecting your tweets only restricts who can see them, but those already following you, can still interact with you and retweet your tweets for others to see? Restricting dialogue won't stop truth-seekers and critics, nor does it advance the democracy and openness which Kagame claims his government does, in the YouTube interview.

Apart from a self-censoring foreign minister and an angry President slain by a journalist and a global supporting cast of tweeters and bloggers (:0), another interesting thing to emerge out of this online spat was the reactions of Kagame's supporters which ranged from blind praise of Kagame to the 'British' lack of understanding  of the Rwanda situation to censure of a Western journalist for disrespecting an African leader. It goes without saying that the staunch Kagame supporters would say this, but when seemingly more open-minded Africans also pick on Birrell's Westernness and re-buff his use of the words 'despot and deluded' because they're not fit for an African leader, there is a big problem. Birrell's identity has nothing to do with the facts - that Kagame shuts down debate in Rwanda and has had Congolese and Rwandan blood on his hands since 1996 - and Kagame's Africanness doesn't make him immune to being called a despot. Why do we get so defensive about these terms? When people call Bush and Blair war mongers, genocidaires and war criminals there's no problem, but African leaders are untouchable because they're African? Screw that. I'm a previous sufferer still in recovery mode from Afro-centric syndrome; a state of mind which mainly afflicts Africans raised in Africa: we always defend our leaders against Others (i.e Westerners) in the name of Africanness, even if we're defending the wrong thing, because the defensiveness that comes from the Them/Us relation borne of colonialism and lived neo-colonial experience is so deeply entrenched in our psyche. Not so say this is wrong - but there are times when its completely justified and necessary to take up this position and there are times when it just isn't. This incident and in some defenses of the crimes of people like Mummar Gaddaffi, Omar Bashir and Robert Mugabe it isn't. Sorry.

Falling Out of Love with Tweeting Politicos

iLove twitter. iReally Do. it's been a great way for me to connect with people from all over the planet and access the news before it makes the papers or have the news-stories and opinion delivered to you in 140 characters or less. but lately it's beginning to feel like one big orgy fest or en masse ego tripping in real time. for some well known people (and i use the term well known quite loosely here to mean anyone with over 1000 non-spambot followers and has appeared in the media counts as well known, in their respective circles), it's a rat race: some are on a mission to get the highest number of followers, while others are consistently tweeting about the highest number of retweets because they've dropped the most profound bit of knowledge of the moment. once is fine, but twice, thrice, boasting much? ...otoh, lesser known mortals tweet to trending topics to have their voice heard and up their followers. i do this too and it's fun when there's a programme everyone's watching on tv or a game is trending like #politicalfilms or #celebperfumes. i'm not sure if everyone reads the links i post or pays attention to what i say, but i'm thankful to those that do and those that engage me in conversation. for those that don't see my tweet, 10 minutes or 10 hours later someone else will post the same link and perhaps express a similar observation. so that's not so bad. depending on who you follow, there's a constant flow of information and/or opinion, empty feel-good & 'i just fed my cat' tweets, notwithstanding. however, as i use twitter more frequently, having grown tired of mark zuckerberg's orwellian tracking of one's every move on facebook, i've come to realise there is also a bad side to twitter. it's very cliquey. most people i follow are journalists, bloggers, activists, writers or politically informed people, others are friends, some celebrities, and some witty people and spoofs who are just the funniest! you'd think it would be the celebs that bug me, but it's the established politicos who have this 'i tweet you, you tweet me', among themselves. some of them are nice and respond to you, some even follow back, but there are those who don't often respond to anyone outside their circle. ironically these people tout themselves as lefties, neutrals, radicals, revolutionaries or progressives, but they maintain their exclusivity. it might be none of my business who people choose and choose not to follow, but when the ratio of followers: followed is disproportionate i.e 10 000 followers, 100 following - such glaring contradictions should be criticised. as if that wasn't enough some even make the public appeal for more followers (e.g. i have 5600 followers i need 400 more, help me twitter) WTF??? do these people ever stop to check who follows them, do they know what their followers have to say, do they even care? i'm friggin tired of some of these self-confessed lefties, radicals and progressives:
1. begging for followers. 
2. hosting in-crowd convos among themselves. as valid as their insights maybe in these back n forths, it's the ignoring of other people that irks me - ask, how i know? the new version of twitter shows who's responded on a particular tweet and how the conversation plays out. 
3. recommending each other as is the tradition of #followfriday. that's normally the biggest orgy fest of the week unless something big has happened then they'll endlessly tweet amongst themselves. 
if these people are progressives and radicals, genuinely trying to dissolve power hierarchies then surely they know that dissolution of power begins with conversation and engagement with everyone at every level. if the same names keep being hashed up in retweets or recommended follows then that sustains hierarchy rather than dismantling it. in this way twitter becomes a simultaneously segregated and joined up space of digital interaction. i may know what politico X is thinking but politico X does not necessarily know my thoughts, but we are featured together in the same hashtags and trendlists. so that's the dilemma how do people become more interactive so tweeting isn't just a futile exercise of typing letters into the ether? answer: #followback. i know of at least three well-known politically minded people who explicitly state that they operate on the principle of engaging everyone and they do it. why don't others? what's the point of having followers if you don't talk to them and you continue to regurgitate the same opinions but with new hashtags and links? funny thing is some of the celebs i follow do more talking to their followers than these progressives n radicals. the good celebs (like @noelclarke & @questlove, @lupefiasco even hosts a mini bookclub!) and even spoofs (like @katieweasel) try to have some daily discussion with their followers and although i don't often participate, it's nice to see the interaction going on. 90% of the time these people are not promoting their stuff but do it just to talk to people, so why don't others do it? even the dalai lama follows no one but he tweets about the essence of dialogue. 
on 26 december @dalailama tweeted: 'in order to create a happy century, a peaceful century we must promote the concept of dialogue.'
yea, His Holiness's great dialogue skills amount to 1 192 144 followers: following 0. numerically he's on par with @kanyewest and @chipmunk who follow no one, but the big difference is they actually TALK to people!
...if i've been sounding like some bitter, unrequited lover, i accept that might be 100% true BUT that doesn't change my point that there is presently something wrong with the concept of twitter as a forum for open, multiple conversations when only selected names continue to dominate timelines because certain people only want to talk amongst themselves and retweet each other. granted, people don't necessarily realise that this is what ends up happening and perhaps if they did, things would change. imo, it'd be nice if twitter's #followfriday was actually #followbackfriday and some of these people followed back and recommended different followers who have something interesting to say rather than just keeping it in the family. maybe an #openthreadfriday could be a possibility. #openthreadfriday would allow for anyone to tweet in the timelines of people they follow although i'm not sure how this would work for those with over 5 000 followers, it might be chaotic, but i'm sure a technological remedy out there. something has to be done for twitter or tweeters to develop a more interactive system than the one currently in place - less local orgy fest, more open conversation. #2011rules.


*i used political categorisations to encompass the different groups of people on my feed. analysing people's behaviour  by global location wouldn't really work as these people share more or less the same views and behave in similar ways.

The ZANE Appeal

This appeal brings to light how both Britain and Zimbabwe shamefully treat their people. In the case of Britain, people of British descent who fought for the Empire now live off of a small pension that the government refuses to increase yet WWII is such a big part of British national pride in their many monuments and numerous days of remembrance of battles, victories and bombings, it's embarassing that the country can't even take care of these 'veterans of Empire.' 10000 Whites, Coloureds and Blacks fought in World War II from colonial Zimbabwe - the largest contingent from Africa fighting for the British. While wars were fought in the name of Empire and continued to serve in the British army's outpost, only the Whites with British ancestry were entitled to pension which today is a pittance, while African soldiers received as little as £10 or nothing at all.

In the case of Zimbabwe, there is little care offered to the aged or ophaned of society so the vulnerable largely rely on family for care. Some of the elderly that ZANE takes care of had savings and like many other Zimbabweans, these funds were wiped out when the change to a multi-currency system was announced in the beginning of '09. 
The government's been so high-drunk on the struggle for land and anti-colonial (read regressive) economics that the multi-currency switch was done in a clumsy manner and no financial compensation was offered to those who had billions, trillions and quintillions locked up in the banks. A lot of people lost everything and had to start again. Even if the West was at fault and was ruthlessly plotting against our Cde Leader, no interference from the West has stopped our beloved Leader Ministers from profiting from the Chiadzwa diamonds or the land re-distribution exercise so there's nothing stopping the (anti-British) government from ensuring "indigenous" people don't die from cholera in infancy or poverty in old age.


Putting aside the ZANE project and Zimbabwe's social ills and Britain's failings for a loooong minute, there is also something to be said about this video. I found myself asking a million questions; can stories about poverty ever be told right? How do the tellers of these stories want them told? What do those to whom these stories belong want? Locating oneself as a Zimbabwean, how does one interpret an advert such as the one above? How different is it to what a British person sees? Does race or age matter? Does it matter that the appeal was not made for me but for a British person? (Presumably of White British ethnicity since the speaker talks of 'our relations' at the beginning)  Whose agenda does this story fit? 
I've no issues with this project, but it's how its filmed and how the narrative of Britain's long lost relations is constructed that lead me to ask the questions above. Sure neither Zimbabwean or Western media focusses much on the experiences of elderly Whites living in Zimbabwe so telling this story is a good thing, but something about the framing of this is problematic.

And to confirm there is something wrong with this video is the accompanying article which plays on the Mugabe bogeyman/White victim that is characteristic of 'I had a farm in Africa' discourse as Brett Davidson calls it. Take this, it attempts to give these people some dignity but seems to draw attention to other issues:

"Many have had their homes and farms taken from them. With great dignity but little to eat, they are barely surviving."

Sure it's a charity plug, I get that, but tugging at the heartstrings by misrepresenting reality and reinforcing a one-dimensional image of starving Zimbabwe has to be questioned because reality tells a different story. How many is 'many' of the many impoverished elderly White folk who lost farms in 2000? Out of the 8 000 elderly people that this charity takes care of, there are not many. One, two hundred tops and even that is being quite generous, but since stories of land repossession dominate the headlines, dominance now translates to 'many' which implies a majority.
Here's a second example that draws on the stereotypes of lawless, corrupt Zimbabwe:

"Operating in Zimbabwe is difficult and dangerous. Money could easily go astray, but ZANE has an unblemished record. Not a single penny raised since 2002 has been lost to corruption. Its brave workers operate "under the radar", as Benyon puts it, dispensing money directly to those who need it most."

...Umm where is it deadly dangerous in urban Zimbabwe? Where most of the Black, Coloured and White elderly people helped by ZANE live? In the retirement homes and houses in the suburbs? No. In the ZANE offices in Zimbabwe? In Harare, Bulawayo, Kwekwe - in which city is it so dangerous for them in 2010? Honest question.

These may be small quibbles, considering the work that this charity has done, but as I'm in the business of critiquing and exploring how narratives are constructed through visual or written forms then it's perfectly legit to de-construct this. And hey I believe in fairness; if Bono gets ripped, so does everybody else!

From Thatcher's Children, With Love

Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You, The Christmas Tree Bomber

...And this time the leading star is a Huey Freeman (Boondocks) look-alike and he's a cutie! That was my first thought when I saw Mohamed Osman Mohamud's face headlining as the latest casualty of the West's war against terrorist bombers. While this latest production may not be not quite as funny as the Underpants bomber but it does stink.

 The U.S Feds followed this Somali hottie for months and they put him in jail??? They were undecided whether he fit the profile of a would-be terrorist so they baited him by selling him fake explosives. Is that fair, why didn't they just call me? I'd've been happy to stalk him for a year and suss out his terrorist street cred. 

But really tho' is it legitimate to provoke someone into action then arrest them when they act? Isn't this what the Feds used to do to the Black Panthers way back when? And COINTELPRO still does today? Mohamed was charged with attempted use of a 'weapon of mass destruction.' (notice the way Saddam/Iraq war type language slips into domestic security lexicon to create a threat-of-terrorism-is-very-real effect) Surely that bogus bogus bogus charge should read: attempted use of a dummy 'weapon of mass destruction'?

Having been successful in their mission the Feds were close at hand to drum the reality of the fake threat into the public's head as Special FBI agent Arthur Balizan told the press yesterday: 

"The threat was very real. Our investigation shows that Mohamed Osman Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale. I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack"

While the Feds pat themselves on the back and the public gets all shook up about this latest Al Qaeda threat and bay for Mohamed's execution on live t.v, I'm still confused as to what opportunity exactly, the Feds were denying this man. Selling ineffective explosives to a wannabe jihadi rapper and fitness guru is a very, very cruel joke, especially when that state-managed joke carries a possible life imprisonment conviction. Do The Feds really get their kicks from playing tircks on youngsters in uneventful Oregon and Dallas, are the ones in Washington or NYC too street-wise to fall for this? 

At least the Times Square and Underpants bombers had intent to carry out workable plans, but they failed - but this dude was possibly unstable and he was tricked. I'm not so sure where trickery rates on the jihadist scale but sending Mohamed to prison may actually radicalise him and turn him against the state even more than he is now as a African immigrant and a Muslim - not exactly the most liked group in American society. But that's a just a small issue right? The important thing is this year the Feds have done a cracking job and arrested almost twenty would-be terrorists in the U.S, now TSA can happily roll out naked scanners at airports, malls, schools and office buildings to catch even more would-be terrorists - real or imagined, catch them in the terror, boys! As with all American cop movies, the Feds win in The Christmas Tree Bomber, and nobody, least of all the lapdog media, seem to mind that federal attempts at terrorist' honeytrapping mean the further curtailment of civil liberties, more mass disruption of public travel, encourages richter-scale levels of Islamophobia and justifies sending more troops to kill or be killed.

....one small step in Oregon, one giant step closer to war on Yemen.

p.s All bets are on for Obama issuing an amended waiver on the use of child soldiers in Somalia to fight terrorism by January.

Scenes From Another Day

Whitehall Mounted Charging

Guardian Video

Well done to all the students who turned out for this! If school children in South Africa were willing to fight for their futures there is no reason why people are outraged that on Wednesday, school children and university students all over the UK, left their classrooms to march for their own futures. The protests in the UK in 2010 are nothing compared to what Black students in South Africa faced in 1976, there were no live rounds being fired, no country exile orders to be issued, but as the videos show, there were pigs on horseback blindly charging through the crowds one knocking over a pregnant woman, another grabbing  a protester's purse and many more pigs on horseback leaving hoof prints on the bodies of students. Personally have no problem with 13 years olds being involved in protest, what I do have a problem with is the disproportionate use of force by the police in response to the protests and that is what people should be talking about, not that children were 'coerced' into marching for their education. 
Up top is the footage that police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson wants to deny stating there was 'no record' of police charging and defended the police's actions saying:"I think our officiers did an extraordinarily good job yesterday... Our job is to facilitate peaceful protests But we have to get the message out that when it does beyond the peaceful that it is criminal. It is quite clear that criminal acts took place." 
Note that 'facilitate peaceful protests' actually means kettle (containment of groups of people using iron barriers) young people for nine and a half hours in the freezing cold without food or water. Also note that the police policy of kettling is meant to be under review after the G20 protests of April 2009 in which Ian Tomlinson was killed by the police.
It couldn't have been more ironic, yet fitting that this march took place the day after Deputy PM, Nick Clegg gave the Hugo Young Lecture in which he said:
"Hugo was a passionate believer that open politics, a politics based on faith in people, rather than institutions, was the generator of real social progress. I agree, and I think that among the many extraordinary changes of 2010, one of the most important will prove to be a watershed in the development of progressive politics."
Progressive politics to Mr Clegg means being deceitful, like in April this year when he signed a pledge not to raise student fees yet in his heart he knew, he and the Lib Dems had long abandoned that promise and it had become a campaign strategy to garner the student vote. Nothing more.
 Thus it comes as no surprise that those who voted for Clegg, turned out in their thousands on Wednesday to express their discontent, burning effigies of the man and chanting against Clegg, Osbourne and Cameron's ideas of cuts for a Fairer Britain. 
The truth is, the UK has a government bent on creating an unFairer Britain. In my view, ConDem have a skewed approach to fairness and a twisted sense of priorities: they are making cuts to education, but they can find £2 million to fund a happiness index, they can find £4.2 million per year to send young people to the killing fields of Afghanistan, they will find £20 billion+ to keep Trident, but they can cut university funding, free school meals and educational allowances, they can do away with the Foods Standards Agency, but they invite Pepsi and McDonalds to sit on the health policy panel - the same companies that sell profit from an unhealthy nation are now the architects of healthy eating. ??? None of these things make sense and the students and trade unions can at least be commended for having the moral and political courage to show people will not sit back any longer. 

Welcome to the Winter of Discontent people of Britain, it's about to get heated up. 
#demo2010

Zuma's Bastard: Encounters With a Desktop Terrorist

Azad Essa is a journalist, columnist and aspiring filmmaker and Zuma's Bastard is his debut novel. Originally from Durban, he is currently based in Doha, Qatar where he works for Al Jazeera as a journalist. Zuma's Bastard is based on the politics of South Africa and the World in the post-Mandela era. 

With chapters like  ‘Was Eugene Terre Blanche a Muslim?’, ‘Blue Julius (and Pink Floyd), ‘Let’s jerk off to Climate Change’ and ‘Nobel Obama Trumps Superman’, no political figure is safe from his satire, even if they dip in their walk. Part of his writing is from the Thought Leader blog run by the Mail and Guardian and his column provides a platform upon which he unrelentingly questions populist rhetoric and asks, at times provocatively, South Africans how bad does it get before we sit up and take notice? As Ferial Haffajee puts it, Essa is of a “generation of South Africans who reached political maturity in the era of Polokwane – the quintessential voice of the Born Frees”

Describing the book, Professor Ari Sitas Head of Sociology at UCT writes:

‘Zuma's Bastard is the new generation's arrogant and self-critical voice about Durban, South Africa and Africa in the world. Azad Essa, a Bollywood-soaked, Indian-battered, black South African-tinged, accidental academic and incidental journalist - who has seen India and Kashmir, India better, in Kashmir, Pakistan, the so-called Middle East and Europe - leaves no holy cows untaunted – nay he even imagines them as beefburgers…His popularity is catching but the moral questions he asks of us cannot be sidestepped. Read this book, buy the T-shirt, be with it and get angry because the author takes his jokes (often us) seriously.’

In an interview with the Daily Maverick he explains his choice of title as thus:

The title is not completely legitimate, but there’s good justification for it. Without giving too much away, the book is made up of two headers: “Zuma’s Bastard” and “Encounters with a desktop terrorist”. They are equally important because they collectively introduce readers to the central theme of the book: a rabid Indian bastard on the loose under Zuma’s watch.

I don’t know what it means to fight for freedom. And in many ways, the title locates me as a child of the Zuma presidency. I was too young during the honeymoon Mandela period to engage in the new democracy and so it doesn’t count. Zuma, touted as the man to lead us away from tendered one-night stands and deliver on promises to the people, capital and who-ever-else he conned, has created a nation of bastards, trying to make sense of it all.

At the same time, I have straight hair, “Indian” skin and go to mosque; I am a desktop terrorist with views of the world that are politically incorrect, sometimes blasphemous and incongruent with the good Indian muslim boy who must open a shop, play the system, marry a virgin and look forward to more in heaven.

If anything, the book is about the coming-of-age of a generation of South Africans who want to finally fight for their freedom.

The book is definitely not anti-Zuma, despite the flattering title. That would be far too easy. The book, like the blog, addresses a variety of themes relevant to South Africans, the usual suspects included, but written from a fresh and humorous perspective. It’s a bludgeoning view of the world from an Indian perspective. And my cousins aren’t going to be thrilled.

Of course the title is meant to create a stir, but we also think it’s the character of the writing (rather than a shocking title for kicks). And about the press material; they probably sent you the polite version.

This book is available in South Africa and will shortly be released in other parts of the world.

From Our Kenyan Brother in The White House

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 25, 2010

Presidential Memorandum--Child Soldiers Prevention Act

Presidential Determination
No.       2011-4

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT:    Presidential Determination with Respect to Section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, pursuant to section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA), title IV of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110 457), I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA.

You are authorized and directed to submit this determination to the Congress, along with the accompanying memorandum of justification, and to publish it in the Federal Register.

                        BARACK OBAMA

The above is waiver issued by President Obama casting a blind eye to four countries that use child soldiers in conflict because it is in America's 'national interest'. Chad, Yemen, Sudan and the Congo will continue to receive military assistance and aid from the U.S because these are allegedly terrorist hotspots where child soldiers might benefit America as snitches and such. LOL. Seriously, my Kenyan brother Barack WTF is this? Because America is fighting some imaginary war against terrorism and has taken it upon itself to 'reform' the armies of these troubled nations, it's now okay to encourage the military conscription of children. Really??? Where is the evidence showing that child soldiers are a neccessary force in fighting 'terrorism' directly linked to the U.S?  If people in the UK are unneccessarily shrieking over children being involved in student protests what makes it okay for children in the Congo to be forcefully drafted as soldiers? Would it be okay if kids from Texas or Ohio or California were drafted into an anti-terrorist army to snuff out Osama bin Laden from his cave - that is if bin Laden actually exists? Would that be alright Mr President?

Whilst I stand firmly against U.S sanctions against any nation and am highly critical of U.S 'military dictatorship assistance' to other nations, the logic for issuing this waiver on child soldiers is downright ridiculous. It is never okay for young boys to be conscripted to fight or for young girls  to be drafted in as fighters, bait or sex pleasures for the older soldiers. Barack Hussein Obama (insert all totemic titles, family lineages and praise names here), adults start wars, not children and it is governments like yours and the dysfunctional, power hungry leaders in conflict countries that create situations like this. Sod national interest, this is a selfish, heartless move that reflects yet again the U.S's two-faced attitude on children's rights. While there are U.S-inititated global policies to help combat child poverty, the U.S has not ratified human rights protocols like the Convention on the Rights of the Child - only Somalia and the U.S have not ratified this treaty. While it can legitimately be said that Somalia has no functioning government, the U.S does have a government and as a state, boldly proclaims itself as 'the home of the free and the brave', so what gives? 

Somalia is one of the countries not on the US waiver list, but both the U.S and Somalia refuse to ratify the same international law. Under the Child Soldier Prevention law Somalia which currently receives help, will no longer get assistance, while the U.S continues to support and fund Ethiopian invasions into Somalia that have left over 300 000 homeless refugees in the past.  Cue Crickets at their loudest. (KMT) OTOH Burma, receives no military aid from the U.S so the law does not make iota of difference, so the Child Soldier Prevention law is ineffective.  A very roundabout laughable way of doing things, isn't it? Obama would rather have just scrapped the whole thing instead of indulging in more lily livered bureaucracy and waste of tax payer funds. It might not be obvious to Obama, but its plain as day clear to me that stopping U.S aid will not stop child soldiers, neither is issuing waivers in the name of national interest effective in fighting 'terrorism', it's just more of the same ol' faffing from the U.S and this latest faff has our Nobel Peace Prize winning, Kenyan Brother in the White House's signature all over it. Change WE can believe in, yeh?

Zimbabwe: Who Got The Land?

By Ian Scoones

One of the most repeated myths about Zimbabwe’s land reform is that all the land went to ‘Mugabe’s cronies’; those with access to elite connections and benefiting from political patronage. This did, of course, happen, and continues to do so. Tackling such extreme excesses of land grabbing through a land audit remains a major challenge. But elite capture is not the whole story of Zimbabwe’s land reform; nor indeed the dominant one.

Who got the land? 

Who got the land and what is the profile of the new settlers? Our study of 400 households across 16 sites from Masvingo province showed by far the majority of the new settlers are ordinary people. About half of all new settler households are from nearby communal areas and another 18% from urban areas. These are people who had little or very poor land in the communal areas or were unemployed or with poorly-paid jobs and living in town. The remaining third of household heads was made up of civil servants (16.5% overall, but increasing to around a quarter of all settlers in A1 self-contained and A2 sites), business people (4.8% overall, but again proportionately higher in the A1 self-contained and A2 sites), security service personnel (3.7% overall) and former farm workers (6.7% overall). Farm workers made up 11.5% of households in the A1 villagised sites, with many taking an active role in the land invasions. In one case a farm worker organised and led the invasion of the farm where he had worked. Given that in other parts of the country, farm workers were displaced in large numbers, often ending up destitute, living in camps on the farms, this is perhaps surprising. Yet this reflects the extent and nature of labour on the former large-scale farms in Masvingo province. Unlike in the Highveld farms, where  large, resident labour forces existed without nearby communal homes, our Masvingo study sites were formerly large-scale ranches where labour was limited, and workers came, often on a temporary basis, from nearby communal areas.

Across all of these categories are ‘war veterans’. As household heads they make up 8.8% of the total population. The category ‘war veteran’ is however a diverse one. Prior to the land invasions, most were farming in the communal areas, a few were living in town, while some were civil servants, business people and employees in the security services.

....However, across our sample only 12% of households had a woman named as the land holder on the permit. The highest proportion of female-headed households was in the informal settlements, as women often saw the land invasions as an opportunity to make a new independent life and escape abusive relationships or accusations of witchcraft, for

example. 

So who amongst these groups are ‘the cronies’?

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities by

Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba, Jacob

Mahenehene and Chrispen Sukume

will be published in November 2010

by Weaver Press in Zimbabwe (http://www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com/),

 Jacana Media in South Africa (http://www.jacana.co.za/) 

and James Currey in the rest of the world (http://www.jamescurrey.co.uk/)

What Would Jesus Say?

Banksy Mural in Islington, London (2008) Children Saluting the Tesco Supermarkets Empire.

As if imitating art, a former Methodist Church is now a Tesco Express in Westbourne, Dorset.

Get your Prayers, Ciggies and Lottery Tickets all in one go.

 Banksy fotocred: Paul Flannery 

Woolas...You're Fired!

Phil Woolas' Hate Lit

Former Labour immigration minister, Phil Woolas has been expelled from parliament, after a court ruled that he lied  about his Lib Dem election opponent having ties to Muslim extremists in his campaign hate literature show above in a deliberate attempt to the angry White vote. Woolas has also been banned from standing for public office for three years and it's expected that there will be a re-run for the Oldham East seat. That a politician has to resort to Islamophobic and xenophobic hype to get votes is bad enough, but for Labour MPs to vote him into Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet says a lot about the Labour party as a whole, considering Woolas has a track record of being anti-immigrants (remember the Gurkhas, the tier system for visas and foreign ID cards). Below is an extract from an on-point opinion piece by Dan Hodges from Labour Uncut on this issue: 

When Phil Woolas’ campaign took the decision to “get the white vote angry” it wasn’t an aberration. They were deploying a localised variation of a national strategy. When we, as a party, call for British jobs for British workers, or a ‘debate’ on immigration, we are speaking in code. And when the code is deciphered it says, “we think you’re racist, but we don’t care. We want you to vote for us anyway”.

When did Andy [Burnham], Ed [Miliband] and the other leadership contenders develop their keen interest in the socio-economic implications of mass migration? Where are Andy’s pamphlets? When were Ed’s adjournment debates? Their speeches, fringes, seminars? These are senior representatives of the mother of parliaments. If they really wanted a ‘debate’ they, more than anyone, have had ample opportunity to engage in one. We don’t want a debate. We want votes. And frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn where they come from.

When the battle for the leadership reached its crescendo, who did David Miliband wheel out as one of his final endorsers? Mrs Duffy. “This new government is not on the side of people like Gillian Duffy”, he said, “I am determined the Labour party will be”. When his brother had finished his leadership speech, whose was one of the first adulatory hands he clasped? Gillian Duffy’s. Asked whether she thought he shared her views on immigration, she replied ”Most probably yes, it was very good”. Ed’s office said he was hoping to grab a cup of tea with her later.

Pandering to white working class prejudice isn’t the preserve of one junior immigration minister. It’s Labour’s official line to take. Every time the BNP makes a breakthrough, our response is the same; it’s a reaction, a cry for help. People are just protesting against the system. They’re not racist. 

The hell they’re not. At the last election the BNP secured 1.9% of the vote. Two percent of the country racist? We should be so lucky.

For more see: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2010/11/05/phil-woolas-is-our-fall-guy/#more-5393

The New KKKlan in the Age of Obama

New Tea Party Ad

 

And then they go 'We have a Black President, we're a post-race nation'. Absolute nonsense! This is dirty, disgusting, KKKlan type politics and I felt so hurt watching this. I wasn't offended by the Joker image before of Obama because I knew the back story of the original artist, but it's appropriation in this context is deeply offensive and so is the Angel of Death comparison. 

In the Age of Obama, the new KKKlan's propaganda operates at a not-so subliminal level.

And then Black people like Lloyd Marcus (rhymes with Ruckus) wanna join this? Really? 

And then you get this other kind of foolishness that just makes me weak! iHave no words! My people, I implore you, enough with this Souljah Boy (thank God my ancestors were slaves so could I rock my bling today) kinda stupid, wake up and realise what's going on.

Update: comment from We Are Respectable N*gros:
The Baracka Flacka Flames video is also proof of an instinct I have long held dear and (usually) kept private to myself: white supremacy is the greatest invention of all time, not because of its durability per se, but rather because of how the subject internalizes it, reproducing the conditions of their own self-hatred and subordination.

I am unafraid to speak to the obligations of black respectability. Sadly, while some of us are ready for the responsibility of having our first Black President, others have clearly demonstrated that they are not. How pitiable and tragic that some confuse a poverty of material circumstances with a poverty of self-respect and black pride.
It's well worth reading in it's entirety: http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-black-people-are-not-ready-to-have.html

vid 1 jacked from Feministing.com & fisttap @sonjasugira for links 2 videos.

Who Put the Crack in Angela's Pipe?

Angela Merkel, Potsdam, Germany

"At the start of the 60s we invited the guest-workers to Germany. We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, that one day they'd go home. That isn't what happened. And of course the tendency was to say: let's be 'multikulti' and live next to each other and enjoy being together, [but] this concept has failed, failed utterly....For several years more people have been leaving our country than entering it...wherever it is possible, we must lower the entry hurdles for those who bring the country forward....Germany should … get tougher on those who refuse to integrate before opening itself up to further immigration."
- Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel

Response: They who, Angela? The Arabs, Turks, Asians, Africans? Who? The Jews, the Muslims, the Sikhs, the Scientologists? Who?


Multiculturalism is a failed project but not for the reasons Merkel points out, she's playing to the gallery because there's a lot of discontent within the party and conservative Germans over immigration. Multiculturalism's like this trendy thing Europe thought they'd name integration as a way of appearing progressive so the EU pressed full steam ahead with policy, but multiculturalism is impossible without first exorcising history's demons and poverty - Merkel needs a reality check. Multiculturalism failed because Germany didn't make it work. Granted it's not an overnight job as the Germans themselves took long enough to get along, but Merkel's not exactly been pro-multikulti or pro-immigration in her policy and strategically distanced herself on these issues so whose collective failure is she talking about? The Financial Times estimates say there's a skills shortage of about 400000 jobs in Germany and but they suggest that this gap can be filled by employed skilled migrants but visa restrictions prevent non-Germans from having certain jobs - so how do people work? Declaring multikulti has failed when you haven't even tried is a bad political tactic, it's evident that resorting to populist rhetoric is def-o a sign of desperate times, I guess the Baden-Wuttemberg 2011election is not looking too great then, Angie?

IMO multiculturalism's more of a Eurocentric cultural project that legitimises the consumption of 'the exotic other' by celebrating diverse cuisines, music and languages, but it doesn't engage people. Governments purposely build ghettos by ethnicity then in a schizophrenic twist embark on projects to de-radicalise 'the other' and pour money into fostering social cohesion to keep things calm...some work, some fail, but at the heart of it: it's the economy, stupid. 
Integration supposed to be the aim of multiculturalism but it's really just mainstreaming everyone into the dominant way of life, a kind of inclusive exclusion - thou shalt not wear a hijab or burkha, but thou shalt speak one standard French and remain in your poor, segregated ghettos. When the ship goes down, blame it on the poor and the migrants, same ol' same ol' and there's much more of this kind of populist talk to come the tougher things get.

pics jacked from The Guardian, Langerhall.com and Zazzle.com.